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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372726">Despair</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblueboxat221b/pseuds/bigblueboxat221b'>bigblueboxat221b</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>How Does Your Marriage Work? [23]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Come From Away - Sankoff &amp; Hein</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, In Gander, Soulmate-Identifying Marks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 13:33:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,436</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372726</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblueboxat221b/pseuds/bigblueboxat221b</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Diane's soulmark has remained grey since the day she was born.<br/>Until today.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Nick/Diane (Come From Away)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>How Does Your Marriage Work? [23]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1499912</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Despair</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: This is not RPF<br/>While Nick and Diane in the musical are based on real people, this story is set strictly in the fictional representation of them in the musical, ‘Come From Away’. I haven’t done any research into their personal lives, and anything further than what is canon in the musical is completely made up, with the exception of some geographical details. This is not intended to represent the real life couple in any way, their thoughts, attitudes or actions. It’s just my brain saying, ‘what if?’, as it does to every story that resonates with me.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Diane stared at her fingers in disbelief. Her whole life the smudges there had been grey, a silent reminder her soulmate had not yet come close enough for them to flare into colour. She’d spent hours colouring them with pens, watching every time someone new came close, desperately hoping as attractive men entered her life.</p><p>All for nothing. Instead she watched everyone she knew – even her son, to her humiliation – found the colour that washed the grey away forever.</p><p>And now, after hours and hours on a plane with hundreds of people she didn’t know, the edges had turned indisputably blue. All those people, she thought with despair. Everyone she’d passed in her walks up and down the aisle, and everyone that had passed her as they took their own walks. The half dozen people she’d sat beside as people switched seats, restless for new conversation.</p><p>She groaned. There was no way to know who it was. As her group was called to find a seat on a bus, she sighed.</p><p>+++</p><p>Diane stared at her fingers in disbelief. The colour had definitely spread. Sometime in the last hour, between leaving the airport and sitting on the bus, the edges of blue had crept in, pale as the sky on an early winter’s morning.</p><p>There were still a lot of people to consider, but less than on the plane, and her heart thumped as she narrowed it down. Everyone on her bus had been on the plane, so she couldn’t exclude anyone except the driver. She did a mental inventory of the faces on the bus, trying not to linger on anyone in particular, but there had been no sign other than the change in colour.</p><p>
  <em>Who could it be? Someone that walked past after I sat down? Or one of the restless folk that insisted on waiting outside when we didn’t depart immediately?</em>
</p><p>Clenching her fist, she wondered if his mark was changing too – and if he’d even noticed. Sighing, she turned to join the queue for the phone.</p><p>+++</p><p>Diane stared at her fingers in disbelief. No change. After all those hours waiting on her own, surrounded by people from the bus as they lined up to call loved ones. It did allow her to discount them, but the disappointment bore a bitter taste. So many years of sympathetic looks as people spotted her grey marks. Years of wearing gloves, of dreading summer in Texas, of wishing she could move somewhere it was cold all year round.</p><p>And now, he was on her bus…</p><p>She could only recall half a dozen of the people from the bus that hadn’t surrounded her while waiting for the phone, and now she was tired and emotional enough to admit privately that there was one person she might hope to get to know just a little more.</p><p>But soulmate? The likelihood was laughable.</p><p>+++</p><p>Diane stared at her fingers in disbelief. The grey was gone now, entirely taken over by a blue she could finally identify. After meeting Nick again as she searched for a bed then spending the next day with him, Diane could say with absolute certainty her soulmark was the exact colour of his eyes.</p><p>She’d smiled into them when he asked to accompany her on her walk around town, wondering where she’d seen that colour before.</p><p>She’d watched them crinkle at the edges as he laughed at her clumsy joke, unable to believe it had been too dark to notice earlier how clear their blue was.</p><p>And she’d barely held in a gasp when it had finally come to her, that his eyes were exactly the colour of the smudges on her knuckles. The smudges now held carefully in his hand. He hadn’t noticed, his eyes on hers as he reached, and Diane felt an electric warmth pulse through her, exactly as people had been telling her since she was old enough to ask.</p><p>
  <em>This is what it feels like when your soulmate touches your soulmark.</em>
</p><p>+++</p><p>Diane stared at her fingers in disbelief. How could she be here, on a plane back home with the man she was certain was her soulmate…and she hadn’t told him? He hadn’t mentioned it either, but Diane could feel something between them. Half a dozen times she though Nick might kiss her, but he didn’t, and she lacked the courage to do so herself.</p><p>
  <em>Not everyone wants to be with their soulmate.</em>
</p><p>Diane couldn’t shake the idea that he knew, had seen the colour change on his own skin only to ignore or reject it. How could she live with that? Knowing he would bear her company enough to talk and laugh with her, but restrained himself from anything more? It would break her heart, and she would not put herself through that. Not if she could help it.</p><p>As the plane shuddered into the sky, Diane felt tears run down her cheeks. She hoped Nick didn’t notice – his sympathy was not something she could bear properly right now. Still, his arm settled around her shoulder and she was sure his lips brushed her temple.</p><p>
  <em>Too much.</em>
</p><p>“Nick,” she blurted, turning to him with wide eyes. She knew she was still crying, but the tension was too much, and she couldn’t stop herself now. Without a word, she showed him her hand.</p><p>He looked down, stiffening when he saw the smudges across her knuckles. “I know,” he said quietly. “I saw them when we walked together.” He drew back, and confusion reigned through her. “You have someone at home.”</p><p>“What?” Diane said. “No, Nick…”</p><p>“No?” he said, and she saw her confusion mirrored in him.</p><p>“It started to change on the plane,” she said. “After you sat next to me. Then more after the bus, and by the time we’d found cots together and eaten together and walked together…”</p><p>Nick’s eyes – the same glorious blue as her soulmark – were growing wide. “What?” he whispered.</p><p>“It’s the same colour as your eyes,” Diane told him, a tiny laugh burbling up in her.</p><p>A frown flickered over his face. “But…” he trailed off, and she was astonished when he tugged at his collar, straining to see something splashed over his skin, where the back of his shoulder met his neck. It must have been almost impossible for him to see. “It’s still grey,” he said, glancing at her in confusion.</p><p>“Grey,” she said, her heart heaving at the word. “Haven’t I….I’m Diane Grey.”</p><p>“Grey,” he whispered, fingers falling from his collar in astonishment.</p><p>Diane raised trembling fingers towards his neck. “May I?” she asked.</p><p>His eyes were serious as he nodded. Diane didn’t look away as her fingers brushed her collar away and slid onto his neck, pressing flat against him, covering the whole soulmark. Her concentration was intense, and she saw the flicker at her touch, then the wide eyes and open mouth of someone experiencing something entirely unexpected. He didn’t speak, but fumbled to take her other hand, pressing his palm to her soulmark.</p><p>They sat in complete silence for the longest time, the warmth pulsing back and forth between them until Diane finally couldn’t hold back, taking a second to flick her eyes down to Nick’s mouth, giving him time to pull away. He didn’t, moving forward instead and meeting her in the middle. They were connected at her soulmark and his, and the pressing of their mouths together as well made Diane’s heart sing as their hearts beat in rapid time.</p><p>When they finally eased away – only far enough to be able to breathe and talk, their hands still pressed to soulmarks, Diane could barely hear anything over her pounding heart.</p><p>“I never thought,” Nick whispered. “Grey.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Diane replied. “What a ridiculous thing to happen.”</p><p>“I do like this, though,” Nick said, rubbing his thumb across the blue on her knuckles. “It’s a lovely colour.”</p><p>“Yes,” Diane replied, smiling into his eyes. “It is.”</p><p>“My company will approve transfers to keep soulmates together,” Nick said, the statement conversational.</p><p>“Okay,” Diane replied without pause. Nick had been waiting as long as she, and if he was willing to do that, she would not object at all.</p><p>+++</p><p>Diane stared at her fingers in disbelief.</p><p>Who would have thought she’d be wearing a wedding band again? And a tungsten ring, the exact colour of Nick’s soulmark. Glancing up, she smiled at Nick.</p><p>“Ready to kiss the fish this time?” he asked, grinning at his wife.</p><p>“Of course,” she replied, smiling into the blue eyes of her husband.</p><p>
  <em>And we honeymooned in Newfoundland.</em>
</p><p>Some things were destined to be.</p>
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